ICANN approves .XXX red-light district for the Internet

The controversial .XXX top-level domain has received final approval from ICANN …

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has given the .XXX top-level domain (TLD) its final seal of approval. The TLD is meant to give pornographic websites a clearly marked home on the Internet, but it has gone through so many ups and downs over the last 11 years that it's almost a shock that it has finally gone through. Still, the measure didn't pass without opposition—nine ICANN board members voted in favor of .XXX, while three opposed and four abstained—and the vote went against the recommendation of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee.

The .XXX TLD was initially proposed by ICM Registry in 2000 and resubmitted in 2004, but it faced strong opposition from politicians and conservative groups. After the second .XXX proposal was approved in 2005, the Family Research Council (FRC) launched a campaign arguing that the TLD would allow pornographers to "expand their evil empires on the Internet." The porn industry opposed the TLD as well, arguing that it would lead to censorship and promote legislation harmful to the industry.

ICANN's board of directors ultimately rejected .XXX in 2006, concerned that the TLD might make ICANN responsible for enforcing laws and regulations over Internet porn. However, supporters of the domain brought it back for consideration in 2007 and again in 2010. The TLD got preliminary approval in June of 2010 with the final vote today.

The proposal is the same as the one outlined in late 2010. ICM Registry will manage the .XXX suffix, and those looking to register an .XXX domain must first complete an application process that will be overseen by the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR). The domains will be limited to the adult industry, and ICM says adult sites that already own .com TLDs will be able to reserve their .XXX domains early so that they can "protect their brand names and intellectual property rights within .XXX."

Neither the adult industry nor free speech advocates are pleased with the decision. "Of course we are disappointed but we are not surprised by the ICANN Board’s decision. As voiced in concerns by speakers at this very conference, the ICANN Board has dangerously undervalued the input from governments worldwide," Free Speech Coalition (FSC) Executive Director Diane Duke said in a statement. "Worse, they have disregarded overwhelming outpouring of opposition from the adult entertainment industry—the supposed sponsorship community—dismissing the interests of free speech on the Internet."

The FSC emphasized that the fight isn't over yet, though—the organization plans to make use of ICANN's review procedures in order to "help the industry fully understand the risks and ramifications of participating in .XXX."

Alex777: You can start censoring all website with .xxx on them on a given system if you are anti-porn. It sounds great for businesses where that stuff is generally verboten, but I'm not sure if it's such a good idea in certain countries. Don't know.

Think of .xxx as a reservation that has just been created. Next we will start seeing proposals to "move" adult sites there. I'm speculating here but I think that is the problem here, or at least one of them. And my sincerest aoplogies with the example, its not meant to offend, simplest example I could come up with.

Think of .xxx as a reservation that has just been created. Next we will start seeing proposals to "move" adult sites there. I'm speculating here but I think that is the problem here, or at least one of them. And my sincerest aoplogies with the example, its not meant to offend, simplest example I could come up with.

Think of .xxx as a reservation that has just been created. Next we will start seeing proposals to "move" adult sites there. I'm speculating here but I think that is the problem here, or at least one of them. And my sincerest aoplogies with the example, its not meant to offend, simplest example I could come up with.

The only bad thing is if the other shoe drops and we mandate that porn must use it. The xxx domain will naturally be thought of as a bad place to a lot of people, since well many people think of porn as a bad thing. Many businesses that are not porn to groups of people may be forced onto the xxx domain because another group deems them pornographic.

In some countries this is porn. Should we force that business to give up their .com domain and move them to a .xx domain? Some people think certain words make things pornographic. So say the ars forum has the word fuck in it? Should ars be forced to the .xxx domain?

Even sites that are legitimately pornography sites. They have invested a lot of money in their url. The name has a lot of value. Should we force these people to destroy some of the value of their company to put them on a different domain?

So in short: Having a .xxx domain is fine as long as it is a just a name people can optionally choose. The second any rules are made as to who should use it we have a big problem.

Think of .xxx as a reservation that has just been created. Next we will start seeing proposals to "move" adult sites there. I'm speculating here but I think that is the problem here, or at least one of them. And my sincerest aoplogies with the example, its not meant to offend, simplest example I could come up with.

This is a huge win for the morality police. The next step is creating civil liability for hosting "adult" content outside of .xxx, and then they can sue the pants off of anyone who produces content that's too racy for them.

Okay, this made me laugh:""expand their evil empires on the Internet." " - they're talking about porn on the internet? ...The FRC certainly hasn't done their research, because the internet is basically entirely for porn. for every legitimate site there is a porno to match it.

Not only that but, as far as porn goes, porn on the web can get AMAZINGLY SPECIFIC - there is a general rule even: No matter how odd your kink is, there is someone else out there with an odder one, and there is a website catering to his/her tastes.

I made an account specifically to talk about this subject, because I think of all possible new domain names this would be a good match.

First of all, I'm curious just how expansive the "porn industry" is based on this quote:"The porn industry opposed the TLD as well, arguing that it would lead to censorship and promote legislation harmful to the industry."

Forgive my ignorance, but is there one group representing the Porn industry, like the MPAA/RIAA "represent" their industries? Surely some sites, like made up porn site #1-100 would be against this, while #101-1000 could think this is just peachy.

One thought that came up, and I think I'll have to start doing some casual "research" myself, is to see how many porn sites don't end in .com. I'm not sure what the specific regs for country suffixes are, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something along the lines of Canadian-Nookie.ca existing

I'd imagine the problem goes something like this: established porn sites with heavy marketing investments in their current domain will suddenly be in a position of limbo: 1) buy the .xxx equivalent of their name, and risk confusing their customers with multiple destinations, or 2) don't buy the .xxx name, and someone else will get it.

Not to mention the tsunami rush of domain squatters who will try to buy every possible .xxx name they can, and all the litigation that existing porn sites will have to go through to reclaim their name from the squatters.

TBH I see little benefit to the creation of .xxx. Porn sites are doing fine with their .coms. They don't need a special domain just for them any more than any of the thousands of other types of content need their own domain.

I see little benefit to the creation of .xxx. Porn sites are doing fine with their .coms. They don't need a special domain just for them any more than any of the thousands of other types of content need their own domain.

This isn't about porn sites' commercial success. It's about ICANN's and the various registrar's commercial success.

I think it's because it doesn't add anything of value. Moral conservatives don't want it. Adult entertainment doesn't want it. Who wants it? Domain registrars and ICANN. Now every porn site is going to buy another domain name, and they all get a little money when that happens. There was a great (text) comic (thought it was xkcd) that showed this, but I can't find it.

I'd imagine the problem goes something like this: established porn sites with heavy marketing investments in their current domain will suddenly be in a position of limbo: 1) buy the .xxx equivalent of their name, and risk confusing their customers with multiple destinations, or 2) don't buy the .xxx name, and someone else will get it.

I'm going to go off an assumption that if a porn site exists in a .com form already, they should only be paying a pittance to the right to their .xxx equivilent (a flat rate for all porn sites which have existed pre-xxx)

That being said, for #1 lets try going to www.google dot... com, us, net, ca, and probably a handful of others. They all point me right back at my usual dot CA because it just forwards to the usual domain. Wikipedia does this too.

For #2, This happens all the time with other sites where scams do happen, or even phish. Torrent sites often come to mind, where the fake one has a new look, the same name, but you have to pay for the service.

I'm sort of straw manning this but as long as the fee is low to reserve the dot xxx domain name, there's no reason any confusion should happen as long as the .xxx redirects to com.

On an unrelated note, Think of the benefits of being able to email your mom a get well message from @DirtyDirtySluts.xxx

FINALLY!!!! It's about time really. Since web sites basically refused to implement a classification system identifying their primary business category (which personally I think would be a better system), this is definitely going to make content filtering so much easier!

Now your home or business can simply block the .XXX suffix and not have to worry about signing up for a service to GOUGE YOU OUT OF ALL YOUR CASH for filtering.

Will it be possible to apply for a domain with XXX even if your website has nothing to do with porn?

EDIT: I know that the article states that the domains would be limited to the adult industry, but what exactly does that entail? 'Adults' as defined by the age of consent? (13 in Spain, 18 in America). I'm finding a lot of issues with the logic behind this move by ICANN. What exactly is included in the definition of "adult industry," and what content will be excluded?

The "Family Research Council" is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Hate Group. Anything they're against, I'm for.

Kind of how I feel when I read anything from the RIAA / MPAA et all - if those scumbags are for it, it simply cant be good.

On topic, as long as people not forced to relocate to the .xxx I'm fine with it. Shame them if you want (ie, think of the children - it's easier to safeguard my children if you kindly do this) but if they start forcing people by law... take your morality and shove it up your behind please (and yes, I am a parent, I have a little 4 year old).

Also, this won't work. If I had an adult site I would buy this second domain and simply forward all traffic this gets to my .com (that I have spent gazillions to promote)

> I know that the article states that the domains would be limited to the adult industry, but what exactly does that entail?

Even sites that are legitimately pornography sites. They have invested a lot of money in their url. The name has a lot of value. Should we force these people to destroy some of the value of their company to put them on a different domain?

They can keep the .com or whatever and have it redirect to the actual .xxx.

Okay, this made me laugh:""expand their evil empires on the Internet." " - they're talking about porn on the internet? ...The FRC certainly hasn't done their research, because the internet is basically entirely for porn. for every legitimate site there is a porno to match it.

Not only that but, as far as porn goes, porn on the web can get AMAZINGLY SPECIFIC - there is a general rule even: No matter how odd your kink is, there is someone else out there with an odder one, and there is a website catering to his/her tastes.

Until such time as they require websites, like the old .com.au system, to actually be relevant to the domain type, this is going to mean jackall.

It was suppose to be .org for non-profits and non-numerical ventures, .com for stores and stuff, .net for personal stuff, etc... Now we've got all these domains and they frankly are all cluttered with junk.

The whole system needs a massive overhaul and some way to force sites to use the proper domain for their content.

This is a huge win for the morality police. The next step is creating civil liability for hosting "adult" content outside of .xxx, and then they can sue the pants off of anyone who produces content that's too racy for them.

this. It's only a matter of time. It's not so much outright "forcing" porn to use .xxx, but gently pushing them to do so. Now that it will be possible to identify adult content by its domain, some people will argue disclaimers and meta tags are no longer sufficient, and all it takes is a sympathetic judge to set a precedent.

Will it be possible to apply for a domain with XXX even if your website has nothing to do with porn?

EDIT: I know that the article states that the domains would be limited to the adult industry, but what exactly does that entail? 'Adults' as defined by the age of consent? (13 in Spain, 18 in America). I'm finding a lot of issues with the logic behind this move by ICANN. What exactly is included in the definition of "adult industry," and what content will be excluded?

Given that the registry is going to charge $60/year/name, and given that companies like Google and GM and IBM have strong incentives to control/prevent nefarious use of the .xxx equivalents, I would say that ICM is going to clean up pretty nicely. I think it's very, very unlikely they would refuse to sell Google.xxx to Google.